Being Point

Tag: courage

  • “As Soon As You Trust Yourself, You Will Know How To Live” ~ Goethe

    After a client meeting this week, a very talented colleague was surprised that I shared an opinion that he said he had not been sufficiently comfortable to share. He said, “I should trust myself more.”

    Goethe said, “As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.”

    What are the implications of trusting yourself? Perhaps that . . . you keep your own counsel, you are willing to honor your instincts, you know yourself and what matters to you . . . and you’re willing to take risks to be true to your core values.

    When you trust yourself, courage comes both more easily and more frequently. You’re less willing to be a pleaser and more willing to honor your life with choices that you clearly make . . . rather than those choices that are made for you, either directly by others, or indirectly by inherited belief systems and customs.

    What is the degree to which you trust yourself? Has your ability to trust yourself increased or diminished over time? Who is your best role model for trusting herself or himself?

  • What Do You Do When You Are Not Being Intrepid?

    What about NOT being intrepid? How has it felt when you have lost your nerve, found your courage sapped, and your resolve weakened?

    Among the famous lines from Dune by Frank Herbert is, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

    What have you done in the past to change not feeling intrepid into at least a neutral feeling, if not the ability to re-access intrepidness? What works for you to transform fear?

  • Freedom To Be and The Hero’s Journey

    The promise of the Hero’s Journey is to return safely home – not necessarily unwounded or unscathed – but free. The freedom comes as a result of losing one’s fear of death during the journey.

    The Hero is able to resist looking into the past with regret or into the future with apprehension. Upon the conclusion of the ordeal, the Hero is able to be present in the moment. The Hero is ultimately free simply to be.

    The Hero’s Journey demands courage and fortitude. The journey requires surrender to the journey itself and to its perils. The passion and commitment to a goal larger than oneself. The drive and zeal to return home and be willing to be transformed by the journey and its lessons.

    Think about your life’s significant challenges and / or adventures. Situations in your life where you have defied your comfort zone in service of a goal or calling that demanded that you grow.

    The journey, of course, is often not enjoyable. It is often arduous, but it is most often supremely rewarding. What parallels can you see in your own life using the steps of the Hero’s Journey? How free are you to be?